The US listed coal sector would go on from 2003 to roughly quadruple, into the highs of 2008. World coal consumption coming out of 2002 would lift, intensely, above the decade long flatline that had marked the previous decade. Of course, much of that advance would be driven not by the developed but by the developing world. Currently I have a couple of coal charts that are loaded into my main website, www.gregor.us. The first chart is that of China’s coal consumption from 1997-2007. The second document shows total global consumption of coal in the same decade, and also the previous decade. The charts reveal (in part) what happens when the new user of energy comes on line, and faces choices about which energy sources to use. More often than not, that choice is coal.

I bring this up as a way to probe further into that difficult mix of opposing, macro factors that I began to discuss week before last. You will recall that I see the following three trends as emergent, now that we are crossing into 2010: (this article continues for subscribers through the membership gateway, on the right side of this page)

You can also read about this subject in a post published yesterday by the same title, at Gregor.us:

The November issue of Gregor.us Monthly, Coal World, has now been published and it carries an unhappy message. I am forecasting that the world will not successfully transition from oil to a broad basket of renewable energy and power sources over the next twenty years. Instead, I strongly favor an outcome in which oil, the construction fuel for the global buildout of new power generation, becomes so expensive that the world becomes energy poor, and turns instead back to coal. In case you hadn’t noticed, the process of energy impoverishment has already begun.

-Gregor

What Peak Oil Can Do for Climate Change: Chris Nelder, Get Realist.

Capital Journal – California’s Budget is Going to Be Dreadful: George Skelton, The Los Angeles Times.

Early Data Suggest Suicides are Rising: Murray and McKay, The Wall Street Journal.

Shifting the World to 100% Clean, Renewable Energy by 2030 – Here Are The Numbers – Jacobson and Delucchi (with links to White Paper and Scientific American Article): Stanford News Office.

Will Federal Stimulus Money Spark a High-Speed Rail Renaissance in the U.S.?: Larry Greenmeier, Scientific American.

Intermittency and You – Do We Need Coal and Nuclear Plants for Baseload Power?: Dave Roberts, Grist.

-Gregor

Photo: Santa Monica Beach, with Railroad: circa 1900.

Seminars About Long-Term Thinking (SALT): Stewart Brand – Rethinking Green, The Long Now Foundation.

Collapse Dynamics: an interview with Noah Raford,  Jason Bradford’s Reality Report.

War, Inflation, Gold, and Collapse: interview with Marc Faber, Commodity Watch Radio (Frisby’s Bulls and Bears).

Yalman and Joyce: on the legacy of social anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, WBUR On Point Radio.

Natural Gas/Marcellus Shale: Walter Hang on Insufficient Regulation of NY State NG Drilling, Democracy Now Radio.

-Gregor

Photo: Tarmac 2, aéroport de Paris-Roissy Charles de Gaulle, juin 2007, Yann Arthus-Bertrand: Gallerie Louis Carre et Cie.

States of shock: The Automatic Earth.

Welcome to Earth’s ‘New’ Ocean: The Arctic: Andrew C. Revkin, NYT Dot Earth.

Living With Coal: David G. Victor and Richard K. Morse, The Boston Review.

California’s cash coming in below guesses: Steven E.F. Brown, San Francisco Business Times.

The Rise and Fall and Rise of U.S. Cities: Paul Kedrosky, Infectious Greed.

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Painting: Passage, by Chris Clark. Proximity Gallery, Philadelphia.